Newness of Life
by Obblyob
Summary: Harry knew, as he hit the floor, that he had to get out of Privet Drive.


Um... hallo? (waves) I'm new to writing fanfiction - though not new to reading it! - so I'm not sure how good this is going to be, but, um... yes. I hope you like it!

DISCLAIMER: I'm not JK Rowling.

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Harry was surprised how easy it was to escape from the Dursleys. He had been planning his escape for several days, and he had been wanting to for years, so for it to be so easy in the end was something of a let down.

It wasn't so much that they mistreated him, exactly – more that their negligence towards him (and their demands on his time) made it unnecessary to abuse him. He picked up the bruises easily enough with all the chores he had to do for them – and, though he was undeniably not the brightest of people, Vernon Dursley knew extremely well how to manage Harry. He had been doing it since the boy was a year old; he had known instinctively that a slap, or a hit now and then, was far more productive than actually beating him up. It kept the promise of worse to come level with the fear of the punishment, keeping Harry completely under his thumb.

But now Harry had broken out. He was free.

He had thought over his options carefully, and eventually come to the conclusion that the only way he was going to get properly away from Privet Drive was to run away; he had little hope that the Order would show any sympathy to him in this respect. He could just see Snape telling him to suck it up, and stop acting like such a spoilt brat. No, the best way to get away properly was to make a clean break, and just run for it. Once he was in London, he could deal with whatever problems arose at his leisure, without having to be always looking over his shoulder.

Slowly, he plotted the best way to escape. He couldn't just sit around in Privet Drive, as his Aunt and Uncle's lackey, and Dudley's punch bag, knowing that he was at least part of the reason Sirius had died. The knowledge of it was crushing him.

But the thing which really pushed Harry over the edge was when Dudley beat him up for what he was determined was the last time. Dudley had, unfortunately, got over his fear of Harry and magic now that he knew Harry couldn't perform magic at home – which had led to Dudley beating Harry up to prove just how un-scared he was.

The moment he hit the floor, Harry knew that he had been here too long, and had to get out of Number 4, Privet Drive.

* * *

Harry knew that the Order was still watching his house and that, after Sirius' death, the 'security' had doubled. Equally, he knew that the wards would show up any magic used in his disguise, and that if they decided he was trying to run away (and after all, why else would he be using magic to alter his appearance?) they would 'capture' him, and politely return him to captivity.

So, magic was out.

Harry had been planning this escape, waiting for the perfect moment to implicate it. This, undoubtedly, was it. The Order knew what Harry Potter looked like extremely well; they wouldn't be expecting 'their' Harry Potter to have bruises obscuring his face. They wouldn't be expecting him to have blond hair. They wouldn't be expecting him to be wearing clothes which fitted him.

Now, in fact, was the perfect moment to escape all of them.

He understood, all too well, that he needed an immediate source of Muggle money, something he wouldn't get from Gringotts, and it was for this reason that he had started looking for a job as soon as he got 'home'. He'd eventually found one in a local restaurant, waiting tables' if Aunt Petunia had known that Harry was working there, she would have barred him from ever entering her house again, claiming that Harry would 'corrupt her precious Duddykins!' – waiting tables was _far_ too common for her. As it was, she just assumed that 'the little freak' was spending his time with 'more bad influences', and kept making snide little references to drug pushers and the magical world.

But the new source of income – and Harry had earned a good amount from the restaurant – gave him that much more freedom to implement his scheme. His only real difficult had been setting up a Muggle bank account, due to the need for 'parental consent', but after the incident in third year, when Uncle Vernon had refused to sign his Hogsmeade form, Harry had become something a dab hand at forging Vernon's signature, and he'd managed it eventually – though he'd had to find and steal his passport first. Until that summer, he hadn't even known that he _had_ a passport.

Harry spent the entire night dying his hair. He had bought several different shades of blonde, to make sure that it looked natural; although this was a good idea in theory, it meant it took Harry a long, long time to implement. And since he wasn't the most expert of hair the final effect was only really convincing from a distance – but he was rather hoping that no one was going to be looking at him too closely.

Still, when it was done, he had to admit that he had done a fairly decent job. His hair was blond – however strange it looked – and flopped forward over his scar – which couldn't be seen anyway, as he had had his face scraped across the gravel on the path in the back-garden, and he had a large graze covering his forehead. He couldn't do anything about how messy his hair was, but he could and did slick gel through it so the messiness looked deliberate. With his slight tan, and blond hair – not to mention his swollen eye, split lip and collection of grazes – he looked nothing like innocent, pale-faced Harry Potter.

Tip-toeing back to his room, he pulled off Dudley's old clothes, and pulled the ones he'd bought out of his wardrobe. A plain but decent T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and a pair of second hand trainers in pretty good nick combined to make him look completely different; and it hadn't even been that expensive – he still had over two hundred pounds in his account.

Out of the wardrobe, he pulled a battered old rucksack, and carefully packed everything he thought he'd need into it; underwear, socks, even some of the hated old hand-me-downs. Everything magical, except his wand and his invisibility cloak, went into his trunk; he had no doubt that Dumbledore would send someone to collect it when it became obvious that Harry was no longer at Privet Drive.

Once his room was immaculate, and he had checked that he had everything, he turned to the last part of his disguise – coloured contact lenses.

These were blue, and, even though he had practised putting them in and out, they were still extremely painful to put in with a black eye. On the other hand, however, once it was done, the boy who looked back at Harry from the mirror, at six o'clock in the morning on the third of July couldn't have looked less like him.

Harry knew the rotation the Order members took to watch him; after the night, Tonks left at ten past six, and Hestia Jones arrived at six fifteen. That gave him five minutes to get downstairs and onto the pavement, to make it look like he was just a pedestrian, with no relationship at all to Number 4, Privet Drive.

He listened carefully, and heard the distinct 'pop' of somebody Disapparating; he shot out the house, and legged it until he was on the pavement outside Number 9, on the other side of the street, heading towards the station, his trunk safely shrunk and inside his pocket. When Hestia Jones appeared, she saw a short blond boy, probably about fourteen, with the some nasty bruises. She smiled kindly at him – he smiled back. She settled down to watch the Potter boy, and forgot all about him.

Behind his magic-proof disguise, Harry Potter smiled, and started on the walk to the train station. He couldn't take long. After all, he didn't want to miss his train.

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I hope you liked it!

-Obbly


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